More

In this fictional matchup, cardinals are divided into brackets against one another and it is up to the contestant to decide who would make a better pontiff.

People who end up picking correctly win what Mr. Rauen calls a "swag bag" of goodies, such as T-shirts, hats and other odds and ends made by his company.

"We figured having a new pope chosen in the month of March meant someone had to create something like a 'Pope Madness,' " Mr. Rauen said, a riff on the "March Madness" phenomenon in college basketball.

ENLARGE

Mr. Rauen, the owner of Envision Screen Printing, in Dubuque, Iowa, is no stranger to media stunts: Two years ago, he raised $5,000 for charity by wearing 247 T-shirts at the same time to set a world record.

This time, Mr. Rauen, who is Catholic, isn't alone in trying to help answer a question on the minds of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics: Who will be the 266th pope?

When the conclave begins in the Sistine Chapel, the 115 assembled cardinals will have no contact with the outside world. They will cast ballots up to four times a day until one cardinal among them secures the two-thirds of the votes needed to become the next pontiff.

Pope Benedict XVI, the first pope to resign in six centuries, created a very rare air in the pre-conclave period because believers haven't flocked to Rome to mourn the death of their pope.

Possible Popes

Review some of the men being talked about as Pope Benedict XVI's successor.

The absence of grief has fostered more active speculation over the next pontiff.

Thus oddsmakers and insiders feel free, for example, to point to Cardinal Angelo Scola from Italy or Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Canada as two of the leading contestants, while the field is largely seen to be wide open.

The hype extends well beyond bracketology. Many in Rome have been signing up for popealert.com—an independent website that promises to send a text when key decisions are made.

There is also adoptacardinal.org, a website created by the Catholic group Youth 2000. People can sign up at this site to get the name of a random cardinal to pray for during the conclave. More than 400,000 people around the world have signed up.

There have also been attempts to influence the cardinals before the conclave. Last week, pamphlets were handed out to reporters working at the Vatican press office expressing support for Cardinal Oswald Garcias. But the material was quickly confiscated by Vatican officials. The pamphlets weren't commissioned by the cardinal, who is the Archbishop of Bombay, according to the text.

The conclave to elect the next pope will begin Tuesday. John Stoll reports from Rome on the preparations. Photo: AP.

Shortly after Pope Benedict's official retirement Feb. 28, the face of Ghana's Cardinal Peter Turkson could be seen looking toward heaven on campaign-style posters in Rome.

A spokesman for Cardinal Turkson said he was too busy preparing for the conclave to comment.

No one has taken credit for the posters.

Nigerian Cardinal John Onaiyekan, in an interview with National Catholic Reporter, said many make the mistake of looking at the papal race "like the World Cup, and they want Nigeria to win."

He said "even the president of Nigeria told me when I spoke to him 'they should give it to us this time'…They all say, 'We are voting for you,' and I have to tell them they're not voting." The cardinal didn't respond to a request for comment.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, well-known in the U.S., has been checking in with his parishioners in New York daily via satellite radio broadcasts.

The papal conclave to elect a new head of the Catholic Church begins in Vatican City Tuesday and workers have been putting the finishing touches on the Sistine Chapel to make sure it's ready for the occasion.

His segments begin with an announcer saying in a booming voice "Straight from the Vatican, here's the Catholic Channel's papal election update."

In a blog post, published while cardinals were meeting last week in what is called the General Congregation, Cardinal Dolan addressed the question of whether his colleagues have begun mulling candidates. "Do names come up?" he asked. "Sure. But the name most spoken about is the Most Holy Name of Jesus!"

Lorenzo Gammarelli, owner of the shop that makes the papal vestments, says the fact that there hasn't been a mourning period this time accentuates the madness.

"There isn't a dead pope this time," said Mr. Gammarelli, whose shop near Rome's Pantheon displays three cassocks in the window made expressly for the next pope (in small, medium and large). The shop has become a magnet for out-of-towners and reporters.

"The media have nothing better to do," Mr. Gammarelli said while taking a break from an interview on Friday to watch animal-rights activists gather outside his store to protest the inclusion of ermine robes in the pope's wardrobe.

In creating the three cassocks, which were delivered to the Vatican Thursday, Mr. Gammarelli said his staff had to consider the entire field of 115 cardinal electors in order to make an "educated decision" about exactly how big to make the vestments.

A throng of prognosticators have been following Mr. Rauen's lead in turning to bracketology to handicap the papal race. Some have used odds set in Las Vegas, the U.K. and elsewhere as a guide for populating the brackets.

A group at Duquesne, a Catholic University in Pittsburgh, launched a bracket challenge for students, with the winner to receive a $100 gift card.

The Religion News Service has created a "Sweet Sistine" game that uses an interactive tool allowing users to see how thousands of players voted in the various rounds.

Cari Donaldson, a 37-year-old freelance writer who home-schools four of her six children, created a bracket of 64 past pontiffs in order to pick the best pope ever. She sees it as a way to assist her study of religion and history.

"My knowledge of papal history was embarrassingly inadequate," said Ms. Donaldson, who published the bracket on a Catholic blog.

Vatican watchers, passionate Catholics and history buffs aren't the only ones keeping an eye on the goings on at the Vatican. Organizers of the Rome Marathon, scheduled for Sunday, have contingency plans should there be a papal enthronement the morning of the race. If there is, they will delay the start time.

"Normally, you get up, have your porridge and go run," said Heidi Cameron, a U.K. native living in Italy. Running her sixth Rome marathon, she said the human body can adjust to a changed timetable, but running in the evening is dangerous in the Eternal City.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.